SlackwareThis Forum is for the discussion of Slackware Linux.
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Is there an application in Slackware that I can run that will show me what packages have been installed in Slackware? I don't want to risk "repeating myself", so to speak, when installing packages and dependencies. Thanks in advance.
There are some peoples attempts to do something like this, which may address their needs but maybe not anyone elses, and will they continue to maintain their work.
Basically with slackware You are the package manager.
ls -la /var/log/packages/*PACKAGE*
not found? - install
ls -la /var/log/packages/*DEPENDENCY*
not found? - install
If you use the tools that Slackware has to install packages such as installpkg, removepkg, upgradepkg, and slackpkg, then you will find a list of all the installed packages and dependecies at: "/var/lib/pkgtools/packages". Knowing that, you can write a simple script to check for coincidences depending on the name of the program that you pass to the script, or just check manually. Just be careful with that directory.
Slackware does not come by default with a tool that manages dependencies, because it will be complicated to fit everybody's needs.
If you're using sbopkg, you can pass the -k option to it instead of the -i, which will skip packages if their SBo version is already installed. I imagine other SBo building programs support something similar.
just a comment: you probably won't know if a package was installed directly or as a dependency.
Yes, I am afraid that there's no tool for Slackware showing some sort of dependency tree helping to identify packages that are no longer needed, because all packages depending on it have been removed from the system.
What I do is this:
1. I don't remove packages that are part of a Slackware standard install, except when I know what I am doing.
2. For software from SlackBuilds.org with "SBo" in the package name I check the README and info files, which usually have good information about dependencies for compile and run time.
3. For software from AlienBOB: read the docs, e.g. for his fantastic Ktown packages.
4. For other software, well, you are responsible for keeping an admin's journal, what you install and remove, when and why (and it's not wrong, at all, to do this even for the three above, too ).
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